The After Life

The First Night Back

Harry?? Harry!!

The first one was a question. The second an exclamation.

There was a third one, too, but it got lost in Harry's shoulder.

For Hermione had leapt up at the sight of him, raced the entire length of the Great Hall and enveloped him in a bear hug so tight that Harry was actually winded a little. Not that he'd dream of telling her to stop. He wasn't going to when it looked like she was about to steamroller him, so he wasn't about to now she had clobbered him liked this.

What was a little lack of breath, to be holding in your arms, the girl you cared for most in the world anyway?

The best part for Harry was how insanely right this felt. Straight away. It drove away all his irrational fears of awkwardness. He'd spent days, maybe the last few weeks, building up the new, and impossibly lovely, vision of Hermione in his head. And his heart was overflowing with thoughts of her. Part of him wondered just how he'd react when he finally saw her again. Would it be weird, would it make him different around her? He'd hated to think that. It would put distance between them when he was trying to do the very opposite.

But here he was, hugging her deeply in the Great Hall. People were watching, they were whispering. They were too shocked by his appearance to be snickering. But Harry didn't care one bit about them. They didn't exist. Only Hermione did, And she didn't seem to mind this, either.

Harry rather thought he'd lose his mind at the situation.

For Hermione was no different than he remembered her. More beautiful, maybe, but that was only because he'd cast off the shroud over his eyes, that had prevented him from looking at her like a real girl before. He didn't think he'd want to look at anything else now. Ever again. But she was still Hermione. And all these new things Harry now felt for her hadn't changed her in his eyes. The reality of the situation flooded him, even shocked him slightly

He'd actually felt this way about her for a long time. Perhaps not as intensely as he did now, but the basis of it seemed to have always been there, just out of sight below his threshold of understanding. There had simply been something so illicit and forbidden about the notion that Harry had boxed it behind a high wall and trained himself to ignore it. But now that fortress was blown open and the truth was staring Harry in the face, the realisation staggering him.

These feelings weren't new at all.

He'd just never allowed himself to throw that tag of more than friends around her neck. There had been too many pitfalls, too many potentially sticky obstacles. There was Ron, Ginny, his own misguided sense of heroism that wanted to take danger onto himself alone. There were the dark distractions of Voldemort, Snape and Malfoy, the horror years and punishing Summers spent under the Dursleys iron boot. There were the deaths of Sirius and Cedric. And of Dumbledore. All things to keep him from any source of solace and happiness.

And there had been an ocean of it at his side all along. One he was now swimming in as he hugged its owner.

It was a hug he didn't want to end. But it been going on for several minutes already and now people were beginning to chatter. He gently disengaged himself from Hermione and looked happily into her face. Her eyes were unfathomably bright. Harry felt blinded by them.

"Hiya, Hermione," he said grinning at her.

"Hi, Harry," she returned, smiling warmly at him.

Harry felt inclined to look away. He felt unworthy of the affection Hermione was displaying for him. And at the same time, a tiny part of him hoped that maybe her feelings for him were just as strong as his had become for her. How this might have happened, Harry could barely guess at. But there was something new there. She'd never looked at him quite like this before. He felt humbled by it, and impossibly excited by the wondrous prospects it proposed.